It’s five A.M. in California and I’m awake.

I have many projects on going at the moment and adding one more makes little sense, but here we go.

I am rereading my novels and reworking them at the moment. Why not. Few have read them yet so I’ll try to improve them before they are “discovered.”

I read novels by real authors everyday. I volunteer on Tuesdays at a hospital and have time to read there as I arrive an hour before I actually start work. I read for an hour everyday at home between tennis four days a week, handball on Thursdays and life.

I have just finished the biography of Mark Twain, by Margaret Sanborn. This book is wonderful. I have also read most of the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography and much of his writings. His life was like all of ours, funny, sad and very interesting. I am now reading “The Complete Writing’s of Mark Twain.”

We have all read many of these stories which are wonderful and enlightening. He had a full life, to say the least. We all should be as lucky. He had his share of loss and tragedy as we all have, but he put those events to use in his novels. He met many interesting people over his long life and used some as characters in his many stories.

I am a novice at writing but working at becoming better. I have the advantage of having met many interesting people over a long life and being willing to put those events in print.

So, the new idea follows here.

I was asleep of course and a thought emerged and I was wide awake. It would not leave me alone.

These exerts that I will place here on a regular basis are diary entries of two young English people looking for a life partner in the distant past.

The story will simply be the inner thoughts of two people looking to find out who they are and to discover what they might become if they were to find the right person to go on this life adventure together with.

My first novel, “The Adventures of the Smith Family” is an 18th century adventure love story. It is Robin Hood with some Downton Abbey tossed in to make a story. I found the story interesting and filled with enough human interest to write it.

These diary entries will be from events taking place at Hampton Court. That is the beginning of this new adventure as I see it, at least at the moment.

Tennis comes from a French game of handball called jeu de paume or “game of the palm” from the 12th and 13th centuries.

Hampton Court, Henry the 8th’s palace which was finished in 1540 was devoted to pleasure, celebration and ostentatious displays of wealth.

The Royal Tennis Court at Hampton Court Palace was built to play real tennis on for Cardinal Wolsey between 1526 and 1529. Henry Vlll of England played there from 1528, so says Wikipedia. By the way, tennis was a little different game back then. It was a combination of hand ball as it used a side wall and tennis as it used racquets.

By the way, people gambled on the games there. Henry’s second wife, Ann Boleyn was gambling on a game when she was arrested to be taken to the Tower of London.

It is one of only fifty “real tennis courts” in the world and is still an active club open to new members.

I have traveled there and walked around the court with my wife and tennis friends several years ago.

Why not come on this new adventure with us?